


The Geode of Her Heart

by CourierNinetyTwo



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cycle of the ocean never stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Geode of Her Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for depictions of psychological abuse.

The weight is infinite.

From all sides, the ocean presses in, daring to try and grind you to dust, but you are impermeable, too dense to shatter. Besides, the chains around your chest are even tighter, enough to suffocate if your throat wasn’t already filled with water, a permanent gag that can’t be spit out.

Yet somehow she sings. Her voice carries through the tides and hollow reefs, echoing inside your skull like the beat of a war siren. Sapphire notes weave through the call, carving deep and setting your teeth on edge. Maybe it’s not real sound, but her thoughts invading yours, even though she only fuses with you when you’re particularly unruly. Something brings harsh words through the waves, hypnotic and resonant.

_Useless._ The venom in her words falls flat, but you still shudder. Her hatred burns for the entire planet, for the homeworld, not you alone, yet there’s just enough pride left for rage to ignite in your blood. _Brute._

You thrash until the water is nothing but salty froth around you, bubble pining for air and struggling to reach the surface. It should boil with the fury under your skin, but the ocean is a cold and massive burden, bending only to the whim of your tormentor. She watches with one hand coiled in the chains until exhaustion kills your temper, saps away what little strength lets you stand instead of kneel, collapsing at her feet.

_Don’t you like your prison?_

You were a commander once. Now, she commands you.

_The cells in the ship were so small. Isn’t this better?_

Every word is driven deep before she vanishes behind a fluttering curtain, taken elsewhere by the sea, but then arms come around you, lash you like a traitor to the prow. Heavier than your cloak even if her body is a fragile, yielding thing. Her love -- what a bitter word, worse than a diamond blade forced against the back of your neck -- comes in whispers, hand-fed until anger cools in your breast. She lines your flaws in gold, sets them in place permanently.

The lesson is clear: you’re better when you break.   

_You should have listened._

She suffered first. The mirror she once was reflects in her eyes during melancholy moments while wandering the ocean floor, dragging you behind her no matter how much you stumble, trapped in shifting shackles. It’s impossible to relearn how your hands work by themselves when Malachite’s blueprint is seared into your body over and over on her whim, becoming a beast of war and yet so easily yoked. Time is liquid and uncountable with the unfamiliar revolutions of the earth beneath you, but it passes, and the memory of what your singular body is for starts to drift away.

Later she croons to remind you, the answer so very simple: you are a vessel, a key to becoming more.

Her vessel.

_Don’t you understand how strong they are?_

You don’t think you can sink deeper, and then you do.

It’s torture when she touches you, but solitude is so much worse. It leaves your anger with no fuse, and the ocean is empty in her absence. Whatever creatures are meant to be down here scatter for miles at your approach, but sometimes you step on the skeletons of coral or see the corpse of something sinking to the bottom, its flesh not yet shorn away by the teeth hidden in the water. When she’s gone, you are a hollow thing, millennia of memories blurring and smoothed away by salt.

Warriors adapt. They are shaped by pressure into perfection. That was what you were taught, once.

She shapes you, as more and more time escapes and you howl for her to come back, the sound stifled into something choked and quiet.

Lapis does eventually -- when you’ve forgotten how to make that noise and cast it like a stone -- promising a future, if not freedom.

The wait is infinite.


End file.
